'Massacre at Bayou Texar' marker sheds light on dark chapter in Pensacola history

The thousands of people each year who visit Bayview Park to take in the peaceful sights and sounds of Bayou Texar are likely unaware that 205 years ago, the tranquil gathering spot was the site of a massacre of as many as 30 Native Americans, including women and children, by U.S. troops.

The dark chapter in Pensacola history was commemorated on Thursday with the dedication of a historic marker at Bayview Park for the "Battle and Massacre at Bayou Texar."

The marker is being dedicated by the city of Pensacola, Escambia County, Santa Rosa Band of Lower Muscogee, the University of West Florida Historic Trust, and the Florida Department of State.

Today, the event is a little-known episode that occurred during the height of the First Seminole War and was quickly overshadowed by Andrew Jackson's occupation of Pensacola just a few weeks later.

Santa Rosa Band of Lower Muscogee Chief Dan Helms said the history of the attack only came to light because of the work of Florida historian and author Dale Cox and Pensacola State College history professor Brian Rucker.

"We walk by these places every day, and we don't realize that these things happened right here where we live, right here where we look out on the water, and we walk our dogs," Cox told the News Journal. "We don't see these places and realize blood was shed here, and lives were lost here."

Cox has written several books on the time period and said that a group of nearly 120 Muscogee Creek refugees were living on the shores of Bayou Texar in what amounted to a 19th-century refugee camp.

The group was part of the thousands of "Red Stick" Muscogee Creeks who had been driven out of Alabama following the Creek War of 1813 to 1814 into Spanish Florida, with many living around Pensacola.

At the time, Pensacola was confined to what today is the central downtown and historic district, while Bayou Texar was on the outskirts of the town.

"They were living there where they could receive some supplies from the Spanish and could trade with the Spanish, but they were also farming," Cox said. "They had gardens and some corn fields and things like that along the bayou, and they also had cabins there where they were living."

In the spring of 1818, as U.S. troops had invaded Spanish Florida near the Georgia border under the command of Andrew Jackson, other groups of Native Americans had conducted raids in Alabama as far north as Evergreen.

Cox said the governor of Alabama encouraged another group of U.S. troops led by Maj. White Youngs, based at Fort Crawford near present-day Brewton, Alabama, to conduct a retaliatory raid on the Creeks living around Pensacola. After a U.S. supply boat was attacked on the Escambia River, Youngs launched the raid the Alabama governor was calling for.

"Not really knowing whether the (Creeks) at this particular camp were involved (in the raids on Alabama) or not," Cox said. "So, Maj. Youngs launched this retaliatory strike down the Escambia River."

The troops traveled down the river in April 1818 to the head of Escambia Bay and then marched on foot to reach the camp on either April 25 or 26, Cox said.

Exactly what happened next is unclear as the accounts tell different stories. The official U.S. account said a battle took place at the camp with one U.S. soldier killed and nine Native Americans killed, 12 to 13 wounded and eight captured.

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The Spanish governor, who wrote to U.S. officials protesting the invasion, reported that eight women and children were "among the killed" in the attack, and those eight had been killed inside their own homes.

Later, Florida historian John Lee Williams wrote in 1837 that 30 Native Americans were killed in the attack. Williams arrived in Pensacola in 1821 and wrote for newspapers there in the 1820s.

"He was on the scene and knew people in Pensacola within three to four years of this incident taking place," Cox said. "He was a secondary account, but pretty close to being contemporary and was there at a time when he knew people who would have been witnesses to this."

Cox said Youngs, the U.S. commander, never wrote an account of the incident himself despite telling people he would.

"I suspect that's because it was a community full of women and children, and there's not much honor in attacking a community full of women and children," Cox said.

The troops withdrew back upriver to Alabama after demanding that the Spanish hand over the Creeks who had fled the attack.

Unknown to anyone in Pensacola at the time, Jackson had already started his march across the Florida Panhandle to capture Pensacola.

Two weeks after the attack on Bayou Texar, Jackson had captured the Spanish town of Pensacola, overwhelming the small Spanish force there. Jackson's scouts reported that the group of Creeks refugees were fleeing toward the Perdido River.

Cox said that it was reported that a group of about 70 people eventually rejoined other groups of Creeks.

"That would kind of fit with what John Lee Williams wrote in the 1830s when he said that 30 had been killed in this attack," Cox said.

The capture of Pensacola was one of the closing actions of the First Seminole War that would lead Spain to realize it could not defend Florida from incursions by U.S. troops. Spain ceded Florida to the U.S. officially in 1821.

"The United States had started the war with an attack on a Native American town, which then led to the Native Americans responding to that attack," Cox said. "Then the United States told Spain, 'Well, if you're not going to put enough soldiers in there to keep these Native Americans from attacking us, you need to cede Florida to us.'"

Cox said he hopes the new marker will allow people to learn more about this time in U.S. and Florida history, which is often overlooked.

"There are many incidents like this that have taken place, not just in Pensacola's history, but in all of Florida's history that have been overlooked, that have been forgotten, that have to do with Native American history," Cox said.

Chief Dan Helms said that as soon as he learned about the event, he sought to have it recognized publicly.

"For so long, our culture and history could not be told," Helms said. "Everybody knows about Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830, but what few people know about is Florida's Indian Removal Act of 1853, which made it illegal for an Indian to remain in the state of Florida unless you gave up your tribal identity, you gave up your personal Indian identity, you gave up your language, you gave up your heritage, you gave up your culture, your traditions, and assimilated into the white society or Black society, depending on the tone of your skin."

Helms said that law remained on the books until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when he was 11 years old.

Helms said the maker can't change the past but can shine a light on it.

"What we can do is highlight some of the attitudes and the prejudices and bigotry and racism that existed in the past to make sure that that doesn't happen again," Helms said.

Speaking at the dedication ceremony Thursday, Helms prayed in the Muscogee language for those killed in the massacre, saying when they speak their language, their ancestors hear them.

"They hear us," Helms said, following a moment of silence after the prayer.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola to mark historic location of 1818 'Massacre at Bayou Texar'